Friday July 26, 2024
A man who claimed to be a Middle Eastern prince and touted sterling business connections to scam Texas investors pleaded guilty Thursday to wire fraud and agreed to pay $2.35 million in restitution.
Dressed in a blue jail jumpsuit with a white long-sleeve shirt underneath, Alex Tannous, 39, admitted he swindled an Austin man who wanted to run ghost kitchens in the Middle East, to the tune of at least $40,000.
A federal grand jury indicted Tannous on Feb. 21 on six counts of wire fraud.
As part of the plea agreement, Tannous acknowledged Thursday that he pulled a similar fraud on other investors, resulting in a total loss of $2.35 million.
"He's going to pay restitution to everybody, but is only pleading to the charge related to one" victim, said his lawyer, Daniel Mehler.
Tannous lured investors into putting their money into business ventures that would operate in the Middle East. But that's not where the money went. Tannous used it to pay personal expenses or sent it to relatives overseas, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin Simmons.
Simmons told U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia that he had a total of 30 victims, and that the one who lost the most — $800,000 — is now deceased.
Behind the wheel of expensive vehicles, he crisscrossed affluent San Antonio neighborhoods — including the Dominion, Stone Oak and Sonterra, and the suburban city of Shavano Park — and Austin in search of investors.
Tannous was a San Antonio resident when he executed his scheme and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in August 2022.
He told potential investors, mostly small- to midsize business owners, that he could help them do business in the United Arab Emirates by tapping financing sources in the Persian Gulf country, according to the indictment and San Antonio Express-News interviews with alleged victims.
According to the indictment, Tannous directed his victims to pay thousands of dollars to entities that he controlled to secure Emirati financing. He said he would use the funds to pay government fees required to do business in the UAE.
"In reality, Tannous had no such ties, and instead, he used the money given to him by his victims to fund his personal lifestyle and enrich his family members," the indictment said.
The indictment focused on three alleged victims of Tannous, but the charge to which he has agreed to plead guilty relates to only one of them — an Austin resident whom Tannous met through a mutual friend in spring 2021.
Tannous allegedly told the man that he was an Emirati emissary charged with finding U.S.-based businesses that could operate in Dubai.
The Austin businessman — referred to in court filings as Victim One — developed software for so-called ghost kitchens, which take orders online and prepare food for pickup and delivery only. Tannous persuaded the man to join him in a joint venture to set up ghost kitchens in the Middle East, promising to secure millions of dollars from an Emirati economic development fund.
The man wired thousands of dollars in four payments to Tannous-controlled Equico Enterprises in summer 2021.
"He told him the he'd take actions back in Dubai, where he would get Victim One's business started in Dubai," Simmons told the judge. "He said that this would require a $100,000 payment. He did take that money or portion of that money — I think it was a total of $80,000, if I remember correctly — and spent that money on personal items and sent a large chunk of that money to other family members located throughout the world."
Garcia set sentencing for Nov. 7, and said he wants a full accounting of where the $2.35 million went. Tannous faces up to 20 years in prison.
Comments